A Nation Emerges

For a small war that most people in Great Britain quickly forgot, the War of 1812 left Americans with lasting symbols and heroes: Uncle Sam, the Star-Spangled Banner, Old Ironsides, Andrew Jackson, Isaac Hull, and Oliver Hazard Perry. Contemporaries felt a resurgence of nationalism not evident since the winning of American independence.

The war also brought economic changes and accelerated those already under way. Restrictions on American trade gave manufacturing a boost. The number of cotton and flour mills and factory-made woolens increased significantly. The biggest growth was in transportation—turnpikes, roads, and canals. A second national bank—which but for the war would not have been approved by Presidents Madison or Monroe, who doubted its constitutionality—was established in 1816.

The defeat of the American Indians and the removal of the British and Spanish presence opened much of the continent for American settlement and the fur trade, west to the Rocky Mountains and south into Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. It is impossible to imagine the same timeline of American growth, expansion, and national feeling if the United States had not gone to war, or if it had lost. The War of 1812 was indeed a little war with great consequences for America.

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